Class Warfare and Video Games

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It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for trying to remember where you drunkenly put your commodore’s greatcoat. Sundays are for playing Rugby. Sundays are for sleeping. Sundays are for treasuring custom Dork Tower artwork. Maybe, if you’re very lucky, Sundays might be for celebrating a relationship milestone with the woman you love.

This week a war crimes trial for a Bosnian general began- his crimes occurred in the 20th century, but- as President Bush should fear- there’s no statute of limitations on these things. Also this week: 3 days after I write this- but the day before this post goes live- a private space craft will have left the Earth and docked with humanity’s future. Also also: Both the As and the Giants slipped to under .500. Oh well.

As a person who is well aware of how much undue difficulty has been heaped upon my life, it is difficult to admit that being male, straight, cis, and white made my life easier. Instead, I can recognize that American society is basically designed to make sure that people like myself have as much help as they need to succeed. Had I born with identical problems, but without my corresponding straight white cis maleness I would have had a significantly more difficult life. I may well not have survived this long.

Actually, there really is one way to ensure that humanity doesn’t repeat its mistakes: empathy. We humans must come to understand that the differences in the circumstances of our birth are morally arbitrary. Once we understand that we could just have easily have been born the Other, the idea of Otherness falls away. We are our siblings keepers because we are are own siblings.

Have you noticed that the last few week’s posts have been light? I’m still reading Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich. Every spare moment of my day is spent reading that fascinating, awesome book. And I’m only 60% done. One of the more interesting passages was Hitler explaining that he didn’t fear America– we had racial problems and incredibly wealth inequality. These were real problems, and Truman vowed to fix them. That’s what made the Greatest Generation so damned great- they beat fascism abroad and worked hard to root out it’s smallest manifestations at home. And their kids brought it all roaring back…

So: The American people own a bunch of stuff that’s intrinsic to the territory we claim. Things like mineral rights, air, spectrum, and water. One of the functions of Government is to divvy that stuff up in a way that is most beneficial to the American people. So when Cox Cable realizes they don’t have the ability to create a cell phone company, what right do they have to sell of America’s bandwidth? It’s not theirs- it’s ours.